


Snow Cones on a Sunday Morning

by gray_autumn_sky



Series: Missing Year Fics [9]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 06:32:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9166372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gray_autumn_sky/pseuds/gray_autumn_sky
Summary: On a snowy night, Regina is missing Henry; and Robin is there with a warm blanket to comfort her.





	

“Just let her be,” David whispers as his hands falls to Snow’s shoulder.

“She’s been sitting there for hours.”

David sighs. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do.”

“We could sit with her,” Snow says as she turns her head to look back at her husband. “At least she wouldn’t be alone.”

“I’m not sure anyone could make her feel less alone.”

For a moment, Snow doesn’t respond. Instead, she stares into the darkened room, watching as Regina sits in a large bay window, starting out at the night sky. Snowflakes flutter and the wind howls, and all she’s wearing is a nightdress. Her hair is down in a long braid that falls over her shoulder and in the moonlight, he can see the tear tracks on her cheeks—and every now and then, another tear adds a streak. She does nothing to brush them away, and he’s not convinced she’s even aware of them.

Robin watches as David turns Snow’s shoulders, and with a regretful little smile, Snow nods as follows him back to bed. From the shadows, he watches them go, and then turns his attention back to Regina—back to the Evil Queen—and he wonders how many night’s she’s spent this way, sad and alone, with no one to comfort her. It always amazes him when he catches her in these moments—catches her unguarded and authentic without the Evil Queen’s façade— and how drawn he is to her. She’s unlike anyone he’s met before and the legacy behind her is troubling at best—yet there’s something so lovable about her, and he finds himself wanting to be the one who helps her learn to live through the grief and find comfort in her memories.

He takes a step forward and then another, grabbing a blanket that hangs over the back of a chair as he makes his way to her. For a moment, he just stands at her side, waiting to be noticed; but her head never turns in his direction.

“M’lady?” He calls gently, taking another step toward her. “M’lady, it’s… awfully late.”

“Yes,” she says after awhile, not bothering to look back at him. “I know.”

“It’s cold…”

“Yes,” she says again. “Cold enough to snow.”

His eyes slowly move from Regina to the window and he watches as the snow collects on the on the windowsill. “Yes,” he murmurs, turning his attention back to her as he unfolds the blanket and drapes it over her—and when he does, his fingers brush against her shoulder and she’s cold to the touch. “You’re freezing,” he says, his voice rising in alarm—and without thinking his sits down beside her and wraps his arms around her. From the reflection in the window, he can see her surprise and he expects her to pull away. But she doesn’t—she makes no effort to move.

“This is the first snow fall,” she tells him in a distant voice. “I wonder if it’s snowing in New York.”

Turning his head, he looks at her directly and his heart aches for her. Though he’s not entirely sure where this ‘New York’ is, he’s pieced together that is where her son is—the son she so desperately loves and the son who doesn’t even remember that she exists.

“Does Henry like the snow?” He asks, intentionally using the present tense—and the slight grin that tugs up at one of the corners of her mouth show her appreciation for not putting her boy into the unreachable past.

“Yes,” she answers in a voice that is barely audible. “He loves the snow.”

Absently his hands rub over her arms as he takes a breath, unsure of whether or not this is something she wants to talk about, but venturing that one way or the other, she’ll let him know. “What is it that he likes most about the snow?”

Through the window he watches as a grin pulls onto her lips. “Everything,” she murmurs, momentarily losing herself in a memory. “We got a lot of snow in the winters where we lived, and every year, usually at the beginning of December, it would start to stick to the ground and actually accumulate.” She smiles wistfully. “This one time, when he was about six years old, he woke me up in the middle of the night because it was snowing and it was excited about it, and wanted me to see it.”

“How sweet…”

“It was,” she agrees with short nod. “We went over to the window and he sat on my lap, and we watched the snow fall.” Turning her head, she looks over at him. “It was a night just like this one and the yard was covered in this fluffy, thick white glistening blanket and…” She looks over at him. “He told me it looked magical.”

“I’m sure it was.”

“And then, he asked if we could makes snow cones,” she says, chuckling softly. And though he isn’t sure what exactly a ‘snow cone’ is, he nonetheless smiles because the memory makes her smile. “I’m not sure why agreed—it was well after midnight—but it wasn’t a school night, so I did and the next thing I knew, we were putting on boots and collecting snow in cups.” She sighs and he watches as a few tears stray from her eyes and slowly roll down her cheeks, and just as she’d done before, she makes no effort to brush them away. “And then, we came inside and I poured some strawberry syrup over the cups of snow—and I know they weren’t really snow cones, they did the trick.”

“I’d have never known the difference.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” she says with a sigh, once more taking a moment to lose herself in the memory. “And then we sat in the window, eating our snow cones and watching our footsteps disappear.”

 “That sounds… like a wonderful night.”

“It was,” she nods, her voice hitching at the back of her throat. “He would have loved this.”

 “I’m sure he would have,” Robin agrees—and he sincerely wishes that it is indeed snowing in New York. “Tell me more,” he says as he takes a breath. “I’d love to hear more about how much your boy loved the snow.”

Regina turns, shifting her whole body toward him and away from the window, and she looks at him in a way that’s indescribable—and then a warm smile pulls onto her lips. Glancing down at the blanket that he placed around her shoulders, she pulls it away from herself, and then, looking back at him, she fans it out so that it covers both of them. “You looked cold,” she murmurs, almost shyly as she looks back at him.

“Thank you,” he says, his breath catching in his lungs as she settles back against him. His eyes close and beneath the blanket, his arm slides around her as 


End file.
